anything you know that you find interesting related to this feild. if you know it and are passionate about it tell the rest of us! teach us something. rant. lecture. question. lets learn something, these boards are sloowww... maybe something stimulating will get people more active and motivated...

Here is something I've been thinking about lately. It's kind of concerning the definition of biopunk. To me - in my head - it's always been a subculture. Not sci fi, not an organization... I mean in the sense that I don't think anything can be done in the name of biopunk, but it can be done by a person who feels he/she is a biopunk.

I think biopunk is a subculture that's not defined yet. I think one can begin to see an outline for it in life science students blogs... there is a life science subculture brewing... nobody calls it biopunk now and it may not even be called that in the end. It will have a name I think and biopunk is not a bad name for it.

A subculture has it's own heroes and villains, philosophers, required texts and experiences and so on. A common view of the world, a common vision of the future.

Biopunk to me is the culture around biohacking as much as biohacking itself. It seeks to provide the context to why someone wants to do the hacking.

Your ideas?

- Splicer

i think its going to be "regulated" by the federal government prety soon, as soon as the first MAJOR (and by major i mean like, the first technological breakthrough, which may or may not be done by a "legitimate" reaserch agency, that makes a platform that we can opperate on a level similar to how windows changed computers) symbol of the future comes out. it will be like a completely novel life form, or an example of how "dangerous" biohacking could be, such as a major outbreak of an irl virus that does something absolutely rediculous to life around earth.

when this happens, and it will happen, the biopunk movement will be moved underground and shunned much the same way the drug culture of america is today. biopunks will be considered clandestine genetic engeneers and any advancement in the feild will be kaput save one or two reaserch projects spaced out by decades that took years to get approved by the government, who by the way, will have international laws signed by every country in existance to limit and destroy anything related to biotechnology.

ignorant, yes. plausible, hah, more like imminent.

so, my thoughts? we need to get as much information stockpiled and circulated as possible before they can do this, into the hands of hundreds if not thousands of people worldwide. ALSO, not only do we need to get the information out there quick, but we need to discuss everything from the most trivial knowledge (to get people started that are curious) to the most advanced findings in the feild on a day to day basis. everyone interested needs to be involved on aquiring the knowledge they seek, if you can help a fellow biopunk then do some reaserch for them, get them access to journal articles that your local university is subscribed to, share information with them, QUESTION, invent, explore, and most importantly stay active and dont let the boards just sit here waiting until everything is BANNED and impossible to spread.

we need biopunk reaserchers. if you have the ability to preform cutting edge experiments (and right now MILLIONS of experiments need to be preformed that arent even really "cutting edge") to catalog general information to reach the next step of our understanding of EVERYTHING pertaining to biohacking PLEASE do it. if you have a question or if you have an idea present it to everyone. if you have an idea for an expiriment (remember they can be very basic, just as long as the literature isnt out there for it yet) let someone know the procedures to preform it. acutally everything about it. brief us on its history and everything. it wont be hard if your passionate. and thats what it seems people are lacking.

its either that or a beleif that they can somehow put a patent on these things and work for some company and make alot of money. in this case they are simply a roadblock and a leech and an insolant little fuck who is only slowing down the movement dramatically. if everyone worked for open source and worked like the whole of people interested was the company and the goal to drive our knowledge further then thats exactly what will happen and everyone will benifit. maybe we will see the day where mankind has no disease and we all live on organic spacecraft ecosystems on other star systems. maybe not.
biopunks need an enthusiasm and drive at least on par with the the ability of our vision.

Subcultures are interesting so I was watching this ”The world ends in 2012” google video a few days ago. The video is a bit nauseating and reminds me of what biopunk is not - of how important the intellectual honesty aspect of biopunk really is.

Biopunk isn't an underground movement. It's not at odds with society or the scientific community. It lives in symbiosis with them. Biopunk exists because much of what previously only could be done by academia and corporations is beginning to be within reach for individuals.

Private individuals are going to put the technology to other uses than academia and corporations - and the use of the new tech has an impact on philosophy and popular culture. This is where biopunk has its function.

Biopunk is not anti-academic or anti-corporate... it lives in symbiosis with them but has different interests and a different view.

“Intellectual Honesty” is a beautiful concept from the academic world... it's important because without it we're dangerously close to la-la land.

With this in mind I bring up the following:

There is a legitimate problem with personal constructive biohacking: With the current level of technology we don't have a good defense against microbes.

We want our ability to synthesize pathogens to be in sync with our ability to neutralize them. And right now the ability to synthesize is moving faster than our ability to neutralize... so there may be a window where we have a legitimate problem.

This is the reason why people like George Church call the prospect of personal constructive biohacking “mildly scary”.

We should listen to these people and make them the heroes of our culture, people like Watson, Venter and Church belong alongside Endy and Aull. They are arguably among the most knowledgeable in the field. They know far more about synthetic biology than I do... and they are intellectually honest.

Where there are legitimate problems they need to be openly discussed and resolved... this has to be part of the biopunk culture.

Besides the 'No effective method to neutralize dangerous microbes yet' issue I don't think there are arguments against personal constructive biohacking(except from fringe groups). And the microbe problem will be solved with time.

Also - there is 'safe today' constructive biohacking to be had.

On the topic of stockpiling in wait for the federal government: It's sort of talking about biopunk if it was something else. It's what biopunk could be in the 'The government is out to get you', 'The corporations are out to get you' and 'everything is going to hell' world... and it's an ok idea to play with as a kind of biopunk fiction I think.

But we're not in that world... we're in the 'open access journals', 'all the books you want a mouse click away', 'MIT, Berkeley & co publish their lectures for free on iTunes', 'Pick up the phone and talk to a postdoc.' world.

So lets spend time in this world first and see if we have to worry about the other if it happens.

-Splicer